They’re now able to do stop-action photography on atoms and electrons.

On a somewhat larger – but still microscopic – scale, biologists can peer into the nucleus of a living cell and spy on the interaction of proteins, the basic building blocks of every organism. “We’re watching the dance of the proteins in action,” molecular biologist David Piwnica-Worms, also at Washington University, said.

For example, Douglass Forbes, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, has made movies of proteins shuttling cargo in and out of the nucleus of a cell through miniature, doughnut-shaped pores. “They’re like small spaceships for nuclear transport,” Forbes said.

The implications of this are immense.